Her chance comes after she discovers, much to her horror, that the professor she had slept with is also bedding her mother. "I just can't seem to stop feeling like one of those air-sucking dogs people leave in cars with the windows open just a tiny bit. I need to put my whole face, my whole self, in the air for a while to try and figure out who I am when I'm not standing next to my amazing mum."
To clear her head, Roanne begins a journey and goes from feeling like an outsider to being embraced by a very special group of people -- people whom most others have found strange or different but with whom Roanne feels right at home. From a marriage proposal by the teenage son of the founders of the Christian Rebirth Center, to her relationship with new best friend Gilbey Tarr -- the sixteen-year-old "Teenage Goddess from Outer Space" -- to a reunion with Dickie Siggins -- international pop star and her mother's life-long friend -- to a bittersweet reconciliation with Del, Roanne soars headfirst into a world of tragedy and comedy, and in the process learns about life, love, and death -- and everything in between.
With this richly satisfying debut novel, Gale Zoë Garnett has channeled Roanne's outsized passions into a tightly crafted and powerfully moving narrative, charting a journey to lands unknown, emotions untapped, and experience unforeseen.
Visible Amazement injects contemporary fiction with welcome jolts of crackling humor and unexpected drama. Written in a totally original and unique voice, the novel, like its heroine, is delightful, disturbing, and utterly unforgettable.
Her chance comes after she discovers, much to her horror, that the professor she had slept with is also bedding her mother. "I just can't seem to stop feeling like one of those air-sucking dogs people leave in cars with the windows open just a tiny bit. I need to put my whole face, my whole self, in the air for a while to try and figure out who I am when I'm not standing next to my amazing mum."
To clear her head, Roanne begins a journey and goes from feeling like an outsider to being embraced by a very special group of people -- people whom most others have found strange or different but with whom Roanne feels right at home. From a marriage proposal by the teenage son of the founders of the Christian Rebirth Center, to her relationship with new best friend Gilbey Tarr -- the sixteen-year-old "Teenage Goddess from Outer Space" -- to a reunion with Dickie Siggins -- international pop star and her mother's life-long friend -- to a bittersweet reconciliation with Del, Roanne soars headfirst into a world of tragedy and comedy, and in the process learns about life, love, and death -- and everything in between.
With this richly satisfying debut novel, Gale Zoë Garnett has channeled Roanne's outsized passions into a tightly crafted and powerfully moving narrative, charting a journey to lands unknown, emotions untapped, and experience unforeseen.
Visible Amazement injects contemporary fiction with welcome jolts of crackling humor and unexpected drama. Written in a totally original and unique voice, the novel, like its heroine, is delightful, disturbing, and utterly unforgettable.
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Her chance comes after she discovers, much to her horror, that the professor she had slept with is also bedding her mother. "I just can't seem to stop feeling like one of those air-sucking dogs people leave in cars with the windows open just a tiny bit. I need to put my whole face, my whole self, in the air for a while to try and figure out who I am when I'm not standing next to my amazing mum."
To clear her head, Roanne begins a journey and goes from feeling like an outsider to being embraced by a very special group of people -- people whom most others have found strange or different but with whom Roanne feels right at home. From a marriage proposal by the teenage son of the founders of the Christian Rebirth Center, to her relationship with new best friend Gilbey Tarr -- the sixteen-year-old "Teenage Goddess from Outer Space" -- to a reunion with Dickie Siggins -- international pop star and her mother's life-long friend -- to a bittersweet reconciliation with Del, Roanne soars headfirst into a world of tragedy and comedy, and in the process learns about life, love, and death -- and everything in between.
With this richly satisfying debut novel, Gale Zoë Garnett has channeled Roanne's outsized passions into a tightly crafted and powerfully moving narrative, charting a journey to lands unknown, emotions untapped, and experience unforeseen.
Visible Amazement injects contemporary fiction with welcome jolts of crackling humor and unexpected drama. Written in a totally original and unique voice, the novel, like its heroine, is delightful, disturbing, and utterly unforgettable.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780743214711 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 04/12/2001 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 378 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
We'd been in Oregon for two months. On the coast, in a neat little house in the woods. The town's called Yachats, an Indian word. Pronounced "YaHOTS." I was born in England, but have lived in Canada since age four. We came down from Vancouver when Del had a sculpture show in a Yachats gallery. The show sold well and Del was offered a job teaching summertime Adult Extension sculpture classes at a college not far away, in Eugene. I got to make some money too, being her model, which I've done, on and off, since I was little.
It was there, in Eugene, where I met Marcus. I had finished modelling for Del's 2-to-4-o'clock class. She still had her 6-to-8 once-a-week night class to do (with a male model), so I decided to go into town and pick up the white sweater I was paying off. I love white things, even though they get dirty fast. The best colour of all, I think, is like the skin in Renoir paintings. It's real hard to find. "Deco peach," Del says it is. Art stuff, instant-home stuff, bend-over stuff and 60s English music and clothes are Del's strongest areas of knowledge.
So, I was on my way to the Fashion Plate (which Del spells p-l-a-i-t. It's a Del joke; in London slang "plait" is going down on a guy, and Del thinks Fashion Plate clothes suck) when I saw this guy. Truly, the best-looking guy I had ever seen. I mean personally seen, as opposed to film, telly, poster or album cover. For a start, he was HUGE! Not fat huge. Tall huge. Six-something. And he had this great hair. It's hard to describe Marcus's hair colour. It was red, brown, gold -- and the whole thing went crazy with beautifulness when the sunlight hit it. And he had this really sexy lower lip. And hands. Big hands.
As far back as I can remember I've had this thing about guys with big hands. When I was little, 6 or 7, I'd see a big-handed guy and suddenly all at once I'd love that person so much! Then, when I was about 9, I would look and think, "Please pick me up! Lift me up!" I like leaving the ground. Del does too. It's inherited. Sometimes, I'd dream I was being held in the palm of his open hand and he'd take me around town. Not any town I've actually ever lived in. A fantasy beach town with this incredible carousel right on the beach. Beautiful carved lacquer-shiny painted horses going round and round. Me watching, sitting in the palm of this huge, beautiful hand. And the hand never closes on me or drops me. I think it's going to, but it doesn't.
At about that time, when the dreams first started happening, I won this drawing contest at school (to make the illustration for a poster about how reading was good). When the man from the library gave me the prize, he said, "Let's give the little girl a great big hand." That made me think of my dream and I got these stupid giggles. People looked at me like they thought I was weird, which I know some of them thought anyway. There was no way I could explain, so I just giggled until the giggle died.
Anyway, this guy in Eugene had hands that were so big and so amazingly beautiful that I loved them all at once and completely and could hardly breathe. He was looking at me. (It's possible I looked weird. If I looked on the outside like I felt on the inside, I'm SURE I looked weird!) He laughed. It wasn't a mean making-fun-of-a-person laugh, but I was embarrassed and took off running for the Fashion Plate.
The night, no surprise, I had the Hand Dream again. Only this time, ditto no surprise, the big hand belonged to the guy from Eugene.
Usually, when I would see somebody I thought was hot, I'd tell Del about it, and she'd tease me and say semi-gross things, and we'd both laugh. This time, though, I didn't say anything. I didn't feel like being teased about it. I think because the hands were in it so much. The hands thing was just so MAJOR for me that I'd never told ANYONE about it. Not even Del. I think people need to keep some stuff. Not tell it.
The following Tuesday I was modelling. I modelled nude but it was OK. Most of the people in Del's classes were really trying to make some kind of art. There was one guy with a sort of pervo way of looking at people. Del told me he was just a little walleyed. Besides, they all knew I was Del's daughter. While I was holding the pose, I kept thinking about the Eugene guy's hands. "Stop fidgeting, Rosie," Del said.
After modelling, while I was waiting for Del to finish her night class and drive us home, I looked around town for Mr. Big Hands, but he wasn't anywhere.
He was somewhere the following week. I wasn't even looking. Things like that are like that. If you want to find someone, it's better if you don't look. I think there's a sort of mystical phantom committee whose whole job is to keep people from getting what they want, and if you don't let on, they get bored with watching you and go off to deny other people stuff and your Wanted Thing slips past them.
Anyway, I was in this croissant place having an apple juice (apple is my favourite juice. Orange churns my guts up. Del's too. Inherited) and drawing. I'm not an artist-artist professionally. I'm a cartoonist. Like Searle and R. Crumb and D.D.A. I've had cartoons printed in school papers, and once in a real newspaper. In Salmon Arm when I was 11. When Del was with Stavro.
So there I was, in the croissant place, drawing this cartoon of a starfish regenerating, when in came the big hands guy. He sat down at the table next to mine, smiled this terrific smile and said, "Hi." I was so glad, this great huge gladness, that I said, actually said, "Yay." It was so right out there in the road we both laughed.
That was Marcus. He said he was 29 so I said I was 16. I knew that 14 sometimes made older guys nervous but 16 was usually OK. We were both lying. Him down, me up, but I didn't know that then.
It was really easy talking with him. He was working at the college too. Teaching Adult Extension short-story writing. Same as the thing Del was doing with drawing. He came from Seattle and had written a book of short stories. He walked me over to the BookNook so I could see it. Bought me a copy. I didn't tell him not to (I think people who say "You shouldn't have!" when they're really happy about being given something are dishonest jerks). He signed, "To Roanne, who has just begun to regenerate -- from Marcus Willoughby, who is still doing so as best he can." He wrote that because of my starfish cartoon, which he said he really liked. So I gave it to him. He asked me to sign it. I'm usually good with words, because of having an English mum, and reading a lot, but all I could think of to write was, "Glad you like this, from Roanne Chappell." Pathetic, eh? Then he had to go teach his night class. I said "Bye" and that it was nice to meet him. Then I stuck his book inside my denim jacket and went back to the croissant place to wait for Del. She was already there, parked at the curb. I could see that the two young guys at the table by the window were impressed. It wasn't about Del. It was about the Morgan.
Being an artist means sometimes being majorly broke. Del and I both know how to make do with whatever. When I was little and there was nothing to eat but bologna (which I hated), Del would point at the slimy pink slices pooching up in the pan and say, "Look, Rosie! Chinese hats!" It didn't make the pink slime taste any better but at least she was trying to make it interesting. Last year, she told me she hated bologna too. It had just been at a good stealing location in Mac's Milk.
The Morgan was Del's extravagance. Even when we were broke, she took really good care of it, telling people it was "a classic," that it had a "wooden frame" and ran "like a thoroughbred." It's dark green and shaped like a Labrador retriever's head. Being a sportscar, it only has two proper seats. With all the paintings and sculptures Del has to haul around, she really needs something like a station wagon, but she loves the Morgan like family, so she just goes back and forth with stuff a lot.
Del was in this really terrific mood. I could tell because she was singing old Brit rock stuff, and when we got to the coast road she did some four-wheel drifts. That's a crazy steering thing you can do in sportscars on winding roads. It feels like the car's going to lose it, but there's a technique to it. Del learned it from this racing car driver she went out with for a while when I was five. He was Italian, with a really low voice and a pretty name. Corrado. When I was little I was scared of four-wheel drifts. I'm used to them now.
So there was Del, singing "Guhn, guhn, gilly guhn guh-uhn, walk on gilded splin...TAHS" and driving all over the road while I felt the sea wind in my face and Marcus's book inside my jacket against my body. It was a happy car.
That night, in my bed, I read one of Marcus's stories. I've always loved to read. Since I was three. Del taught me because I pestered her all the time. I wanted to be on the inside of the secret of the black squiggles. I think when you move around a lot and don't relate really well with kids your own age, books can be an important alternative to suicide. I'm usually more optimistic about my life now. Books helped with that by showing me possible ways out when my wherever and whatever weren't as terrific as they could be. I still read a lot, but now it's mostly just because I like to.
I started one Marcus-story, about a divorcing couple who were fighting over books and records. I couldn't get into it. Then I found "Ursa Major." The woman in the story is on a camping trip with her boring husband. She sees a large, beautiful bear. She leaves food out for him. The next day, she finds a bright blue bead where the food had been. She knows it's crazy, but she's certain that the bear left the bead. She strings it on a shoelace and wears it around her neck, telling her husband she found it in the woods. After a week, she has seven bright blue beads on her necklace. At night, while her husband is sleeping, she leaves their tent and walks to the food and beads place. The bear is there. The woman, Alice, feels there's a sense, "an echo" of a man's face within the bear face, "an echo of a man's body within the bear body." The bear kneels in front of her. She drops to her knees facing him/it, smiling. "Alice saw the arrow glinting in the night sky, lit by the moon. It described a wide arc. As she cried out, the arrow found its mark. The bear's mouth opened in surprise, making no sound. His great Kodiak body pitched sideways and fell with a thud to the ground. Once again, as he had deliberately and by accident for ten years, her husband had stepped between Alice and something interesting." I really liked that one. I understood it PERSONALLY. For a while I'd been feeling that something interesting was trying to happen to me, and that someone, or something, was in the road between me and it.
I loved the words "described a wide arc." I wanted to make a cartoon of that, but was too sleepy. I dreamt I was held in the bear's paw. Inside the paw was a man's hand. It was, of course, Marcus's.
The next day, in the teachers' room, while Del was changing into her smock, I looked up Marcus's schedule on the bulletin board. He had a 2:30 to 4:30. I decided that after I finished modelling in Del's 2-to-4 class, I would casually walk by in front of his room. Say hello and see what he said back.
At four, I toreassed out of Del's class and ran upstairs to the women's loo on Marcus's floor. Hair up or hair down? Down was sexier but Del was always saying I had "a gorgeous neck and clavicles" that I "obscured with too much hair." Marcus was closer to Del's age than mine, so I decided to go for a high ponytail. Did lips, did eyes, and hauled my heartbreaker clavicles down the hall. Timing, perfecto! Marcus's class was breaking up and people were coming through the door. Then Marcus came out. He was talking to a woman. She looked low end of older. About 25, 26. Blondish. Fattish. He didn't see me. "Hi," I said brilliantly. They both looked at me. "Oh, hello, Roanne," he said, sounding like what a beige wall would sound like if a beige wall could talk. The woman was looking at me with that "Oh, really?" face female persons sometimes use to make other female persons feel stupid and wrong. It worked great. I said something truly babbloid about having to model for my mother's class, then ran off down the hall. Behind me, I heard them laugh. I was sure it was something about me. Probably about my body. "You're in no position to do body jokes, Miss Lard-ass Bleacho Bloato!" I wanted to say, but I got a grip on it. Back on the second floor, all flushed, I turned on the water fountain, stuck my hand in it and wet my face. Damn, I thought, I don't know how to do this stuff! What was I supposed to do, turn around and bend over?
"Hello, you." It was Marcus. I was still mad at him for laughing at me the day before, with the fat blonde. It had been my plan to cut him dead the next time I saw him.
"Hi!!" I said. Then I remembered my plan and went back to my cartoon of a fat blonde being penetrated rectally by a schoolbus.
"May I sit down?"
"If you like."
I was pleased with that. Cool, but not rude.
Marcus, however, didn't seem to notice. He sat down, smiling his terrific smile. "I want to use some lapidary, different colored stones, as part of a writing exercise for tomorrow's class. There's a shop, Clyde's Rock House, out on the coast road. Would you like to take a ride out there with me?"
1) I'm too busy. 2) Sorry, I'm meeting somebody. 3) Fuck you. I couldn't decide which one to use. "OK," I said.
I knew Clyde's. Knew Clyde. Nice old guy. Skinny. Missing his two bottom front teeth. He'd owned the Shell station next to the rock shop. Sold the station to his nephew Buzz and opened the Rock House because he loved rocks. Clyde had a big black dog, mostly Lab, named Geronimo. Geronimo really liked me, and Clyde let me take him for runs on the beach. I had bought some stones from Clyde too. His prices were lots better than in Vancouver. Even with the money difference between American and Canadian.
I told Marcus all this as we drove along the coast road. It was a gray day and a little cold, so Marcus gave me his jacket to wear. It was green corduroy and smelled like him. It felt like I was wearing Marcus. Like I was the man echo inside the bear.
Marcus drove a Jeep. I liked it. Funky-elegant. Like Marcus. He was wearing a green-and-gray checked flannel shirt and old black jeans. Button fly. He looked incredibly hot. I felt like screaming "Yippieshit!" I told him I'd read "Ursa Major," and that I thought it was "quite good."
He smiled, but kept his eyes on the road. "Did you? I'm glad." He squeezed my knee for a quick minute. I thought I was going to explode.
Clyde was happy to see me (which made me look important in front of Marcus), but nowhere near as happy as Geronimo, who jumped all over me and licked my face. Marcus looked through the boxes of stones. He bought amethysts, carnelian, lapis, malachite and, I think, topaz. Geronimo was galumphing back and forth. He wanted a beach run. I asked Marcus if he'd mind.
"Not at all," he said. "I'd enjoy a beach run myself."
There was about a minute of drizzle, then bam!, it was pissing with rain. Geronimo didn't mind. He was already soaking wet from running in and out of the sea. Marcus and I ran for cover under the pier.
I'd love to say it was this incredibly perfect experience. Two Bodies Moving as One and all that. But it wasn't. Not even a little bit. What it was was:
1. A boulderette in the sand grinding into the left cheek of my bum.
2. Rain coming through the boards of the pier into my eyes (which I closed). And my nose (which I could not close).
3. Sand in pretty much everything I had that could get sand in it.
As for two bodies moving as one, forget it! My fault. I kept trying to go up when Marcus went down. But, what with the rock and the sand and the rain in my nose, I would lose the rhythm. When I moved down as Marcus moved up, he'd fall out and one of us, sometimes both of us, would have to put him back in. I was very wet inside and it made his thing slippery and sticky and it took forever to put it back. Marcus asked me to say his name over and over, and to say "fuck me," so I said "Marcus, Marcus, fuck me, fuck me." Or, "Marcus, fuck me, Marcus, fuck me." Then he came, saying, "Yes, baby, yes!" I didn't come. While he was coming and yessing, I said, "I love you." I said it very softly so he wouldn't feel obligated to love me back.
When Marcus pulled out I found out why I was so wet. His thing was covered with blood! Perfect, Roanne! Absolutely fucking brilliant! I felt like the scummiest, grossest person anybody could possibly be with. I started to cry and couldn't stop. I kept sobbing these huge gulpy sobs and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Marcus was very sweet, sweeter than I would've been if somebody bled all over ME! He sat up and held me. He rocked me in his arms and petted my hair. He kept saying, "It's OK, baby, it's OK." Geronimo was trying to lick between my legs.
It had gotten dark while we were under the pier, so we put just our shirts on and sat in the shallow water to wash ourselves off. Then we finished dressing and walked Geronimo back to Clyde's.
Driving me home, Marcus asked, "How do you feel?" I said I was OK. He held my hand and played with my fingers. I asked if he wanted to go for a pizza. He said he couldn't. That he had a meeting with a writing student. That he'd see me at the college.
After you're with someone for the first time, it's really, really important that they ask you out again. With someone sexually, I mean. Not that I would've blamed Marcus if he didn't want more actual sex with me. I wasn't very good at it. And I bled on him. But after a first time, a woman or girl or whatever feels really open. It's like you give yourself over, give up a lot of the control you have over who you are, over how it is with you. With the roadie, I knew when we were doing it that he was only in town for the one night. And he was a rock 'n' roll person. Marcus was going to be in Eugene all summer. And he wrote books, which isn't occupationally as flaky. So I needed to have him at least ask if I wanted to have lunch or something. He didn't.
When I got inside the house, I called the college and asked the woman who answered to please tell Delores Chappell, the art teacher in 232, that her daughter got a ride home and would see her there. Then I put on a Bob Marley tape, washed out my panties and the crotch of my jeans, took a hot bath and put in a plug. Then I made a grilled cheese sandwich but had this awful, majorly large crying gulpo after I ate it which made me throw the sandwich back up. Then I started crying again. Felt like a real jerk. Went out and sat on the porch. It had stopped raining. There was a breeze. Everything smelled green and good. I had to stop thinking of Marcus's beautiful hands on my body or I'd start crying again. So I got the Interesting and/or Pretty Words book that I had been making, turned to the Foreign Words section and said the words out loud.
Vertige
Pipistrello
Farfalla
Sizwe
Pamplemousse
Jacaranda
Iliovasilema
Mousseline
Auto-da-Fé
"Pipistrello" felt best in my mouth, so I rocked back and forth in the swing chair and said it over and over until the crying burned off.
I woke when I heard the Morgan pull up.
"Hullo, Rosie mine! Give us a hand, would you, love?" She was trying to wrestle an enormous wood sculpture out of the passenger seat. It was supergood! A cluster of naked people all tangled together. We hauled it onto the porch.
"This is great, Del. I love it."
"It's not finished. I decided to bring it home and refine it on the porch so I can work naked. Have you eaten?" I gave the short answer, "No." Del set about to make us a salade NiÇoise. I've always loved watching Del do stuff with her hands. It fills her with energy and makes her glow. That night, she was looking particularly beautiful. She was wearing her floaty dress, the one made out of old chiffon scarves. White, pale blue and pale green. The odd flower print here and there. Her amazing Irish setter-colored hair was all curly and shiny. My hair, which is almost black, is the same type, only Del's looks Art Nouveau whereas mine mostly looks messy. Big hair is like big tits and bums. You have to grow into it.
We had eaten our salads and Del was smoking a joint when she asked, "Who drove you home?"
Oh well, what the hell. "One of the teachers from the college. He had to go to Clyde's. Name's Marcus."
"Marcus Willoughby?"
"Uh-huh. Do you know him?"
"Yes, I do. He's a lovely guy."
As far back as I could remember, whenever Del was fucking somebody, she'd describe him as "a lovely guy."
I couldn't get it out of my mind. No matter what else I was doing or thinking about, "lovely guy" would come into my head. Del and Marcus. I tried to remember if there'd ever been a "lovely guy" Del hadn't gone to bed with. Couldn't think of one. I knew I had no real right to be mad at Del. She didn't know I'd done it with Marcus. I thought of telling her. Telling her what? That he wanted me to be his girl? Since Blood on the Beach, he hadn't even phoned me or looked for me. The one time I saw him, in the hall at the college, he was walking with two very tall women, nodding and saying "Mm-hmm" while the one with the largest nose nattered away about a person or place called "Dooney Barns." He saw me, said, "Hi, Roanne" and kept walking.
Del and I had always spent a lot of time hanging out together. Talking. Laughing. Just goofing on stuff. After the Lovely Guy Thing, I couldn't do that. I was all turned around inside, and afraid I'd start to cry or say something dumb. When I wasn't doing Del's classes I was real pulled-in and quiet. Del and I are both sort of moody people, and I knew she wasn't pressing it, was trying to give me room.
I was in the croissant place, drawing.
"I've been looking for you. Would you like to have lunch at my place on Saturday?" It had been five days since we drove out to Clyde's. Maybe he had just been waiting for me to stop bleeding.
I decided to tell Del. There was no point expecting her to respect a situation she didn't know about. She was lying on the chesterfield in a long white shirt, listening to Dr. John the Night Tripper on the stereo. I didn't want to be too intense.
"Hi," I said and went into the kitchen. "Want a spiced milk?" She didn't, but asked me to have mine out on the porch with her.
She was in the swing chair. I still felt shy, which I wasn't used to feeling with Del. I sat on the top step, facing her. We talked for a while about a woman in her class who was doing a really good sculpture of me. Then I said, "I like Marcus Willoughby."
She laughed. "Of course you do. He's bloody gorgeous!"
I looked down. I didn't know why, but it was all a little scary. "He's asked me to lunch on Saturday."
"I see...isn't he a bit old for you, Rosie?"
"I've sort of given myself a 30 ceiling. Marcus is 29."
"He's 34."
"He told me 29."
Del lit a cigarette. Her eyes, in the Zippo light, looked...I don't know what. Something. Worried?
"Look, Rosie...I give you lots of room. Always have, right? I do it because I know you're smart. Always were. Even when you were small you did fewer arsehole things than most people. Do...what you like. You will anyway, you're my kid. But, please...be careful. Don't get yourself into a bad corner. People aren't always as they seem. They rarely are, in fact...do you understand?"
"I think so."
Del got up, walked up to me, lifted my face, tapped my nose. "Good. I'm going to crash. It's been a long day. I'm drained." She went inside.
I walked over to the wood sculpture. I ran my hands over the bodies and little round heads of the naked wooden people. What did she mean, "bad corner"? Should I have told her that Marcus already did me? That I wanted, very much, for him to do me again, with me being better at it?
I've reviewed Thursday night over and over in my mind. I know that what I did was violent and wrong. That I did an injury to somebody who loves me because of somebody who did not. When I play it back, though, which I do all the time, I cannot see myself doing anything other than what I did.
I had submitted some cartoons to The Eugene Weekly Thang, an alternative newspaper that was working out of the college. Their editor left a note for me in Del's box saying the editorial board liked my stuff and inviting me to a staff meeting at the college on Thursday evening. Del congratulated me when I told her about it and agreed to let me out of her night class a half hour earlier.
Some woman was reading her article on cosmetics and feminism. It wasn't that I wasn't interested. It was just a very long article, so I was sort of looking out the window. I could see Del outside, sitting in the Morgan, talking with a guy in the passenger seat. I couldn't see the guy's face. I could see his size. I could see his hair. The Morgan pulled out of the parking lot. I excused myself and ran downstairs. I had modelling money in my bag. I could afford the taxi home.
I heard them upstairs. Not words, just laughing and mumbles. I went up the steps on all fours, because my knees and hands make less noise than my feet. Del's bedroom door was open. It was a full-moon night, moonlight came through the window and onto the bed. Del was on top. Marcus's hands were moving over her body. From her tits to her sides to her ass and back up her sides to her tits. Del's ass was moving. Up and down, up and down. In the moonlight, it looked HUGE. I didn't snap until Marcus said, "Say my name," and she did.
It happened very fast. I got to the bed as Del's ass was moving up. I remember it as being the size of the world and pale yellow. As it rose, I sank my teeth into it. I knew I went through the skin because I tasted blood. There was screaming and cursing. I heard my name as I ran down the stairs and out the door. Then I was running through the woods to the coast road. I kept on running. Running as fast as I could to nowhere in particular.
Clyde's. Pigsweat and panting, standing in front of the Rock House. There weren't any lights on in Clyde's apartment above the shop. Geronimo, who was guarding the Rock House and Shell station, started to bark, but stopped when he saw it was me. He put his front paws on my shoulders and licked my face. I let him do that for a while because it felt really good and was helping me to slow down inside. Then I walked him behind the building to the toolshed where he slept. Wasted, I flopped down on the shed floor. The shed was dank-smelling, but the cement floor felt cool. Geronimo curled up beside me. I threw an arm over him. He licked my hand. I nuzzled his fur. I think he was glad to have company.
I closed my eyes but couldn't sleep right away because I was thinking about the grenaded kid, like I always do when people do bad surprises. The kid was American. From Iowa or Ohio (I always get those two places confused. Whichever one you say it feels like you're mispronouncing the other one). Anyway, one day this kid, he was eight years old, found a grenade. He didn't know what it was, but he thought it was interesting so he kept it. The newspaper said he told his little sister it was "pretty." Then one day he was in his room playing with all the found stuff he'd collected. He was looking at his pretty grenade, holding it real close to his face. It exploded and blew his face off. Away. Gone. I thought then and I think now that people are like that. They're interesting and they're pretty and because you don't know, or just keep forgetting they can blow up, you take them home and you're all relaxed and looking at them up close when blammo! they go off in your face. Always, when people grenaded me, it was Del who helped me put myself back together. Some of my Grenade People were kids. Some were teachers or other grown-ups. Some were even real close friends, like Brian. Sober Brian. But when Drunk Brian turned into a Grenade Person, that one night, Del threw him out. She really liked him, but when he grenaded she packed him off. So OK, Marcus grenaded, but this time Del grenaded with him and I got double-blammo! With one of the blammers being my major protector. To be fair, I don't think people always mean to grenade. It's just they've got this grenade-y stuff inside and it goes off whenever. So you need at least one put-you-back-together person. That was Del. Now maybe it wasn't.
Then there's the Starfish Thing. When I was eight we found a starfish on the beach. Del told me that when they lose one of their starpoints, it "regenerates." Grows back. So, maybe if everybody else is a grenade, I had to learn to be a starfish. But how? I'm a person. Could a person learn starfishness, or did I have to learn grenading and go off before the other grenade does?
Lying there with Geronimo, that's what I was thinking about. I didn't want to be a damn grenade. I mean, that boy in Ohiowa lost his whole face. Lost his whole fucking life! I didn't want to do things that did like that. What I wanted was for other people to not do it to me. If I didn't want to learn grenade, I would absolutely have to learn starfish. When I fell asleep I dreamt I could do it, but I almost always do really well with stuff like that in dreams. Awake Life is harder.
When the morning light came through the shed window, I woke up. At first I didn't know where I was, like when I was little and we moved around really a lot. My hands and arms were filthy, my pink tanktop was all black-smudgy from the shed floor and my armpits smelled like rotting roast beef and puppy's breath. Geronimo was in a corner, slurping from his water dish. I crawled over and nudged him out of the way. His water was dusty-tasting but I was thirsty. He didn't seem to mind sharing, but he tilted his head to one side. I laughed. "Looks weird, eh?" It was probably about 6 A.M. We went for a beach run, though I was still pretty tired and mostly walked along the beach while he did his regulation goofy freaking-in-the-sea thing. I knew that I had to go home and deal with the whole shitstorm.
Del was not there. I knew she wouldn't be. She was at the college, using God knows who as a model. It was supposed to be me, but just showing up as usual seemed like a less than brilliant idea. I took a major bath, with bubbles, then baked a couple of potatoes. When I was seven, and Del was seeing Brian, who was Irish, he said, "When all else is out of the question, a person needs to eat a potato," that potatoes would "soothe you, whether you were sick at heart or sick in body." I don't know if it was just the power of suggestion, but ever since he said it, baked potatoes have been one of my major comfort foods.
There had never been any violence thing between Del and me. I knew other kids had violence with their parents, but Del never hit me. It was also true, however, that I'd never before bit her ass while she was fucking. This was all really new stuff and I had no idea what the appropriate behavior was. I decided to write a note:
Dear Del,I am in the woods. I'd like to come in and work out all our stuff, but I don't want to if it's going to be scary. If you still like me (dumb joke) and want to talk, please come out on the porch and call my name. If you're too pissed off to do that I will understand.
Roanne
Then I grabbed my bag of drawing books and wordbooks and went into the woods to wait.
"RO-SIEEE..."
I came out from behind the tree. I was pretty sure it wasn't a trick or anything, but because of the general weirdness of recent events I stopped some distance from the porch and asked, "Honest? It's cool?"
Del smiled. "Honest, it's cool."
I sat in the swing chair. Del stood. I figured I must've broken skin. Not so she needed stitches or anything, but enough so that sitting was not her favorite thing. Del said something about being "savagely bit in the bum by me own kid," and we both laughed. Then she said, "We were a bet, baby."
"What?"
"A bet. We were a bet. Some slag bitch in one of his bloody classes bet him he couldn't pull both of us. The mum and the kid."
"Was she a fat blonde?"
"I've no bloody idea. I only know we were a bet."
I was glad I'd eaten potatoes. Potatoes were the one food I never puked back up no matter what.
"What did they bet?" My eyes must have filled up, because Del came to the swing chair and sat, crossing her legs and putting her assweight on one cheek. She wiped under my eyes with her finger and then petted my face.
"Money."
"Yuck."
"Yuck, indeed. Then, when we were both 'accomplished,' said slag bitch upped the ante. Said she'd only pay up if he did both of us at once. And took a Polaroid."
"Oh, God, Saturday. Did he invite you to have lunch this Saturday?"
"Yes."
I put my arms around Del and rested my head on her chest, hoping to Christ the potato-puke rule held. Finally, I said, "He seemed, I dunno...gentler than that. Sweeter. We were a...a bet? That's so ugly."
Del kissed the top of my head. Then she went over to the porch railing and lit a cigarette.
"He is gentle, Rosie. I think we were both something he genuinely wanted to do. Without a bet. The bet wasn't his idea, but when it was suggested, I reckon he saw it as a sort of dare. Men are stupid about dares, Rosie. I reckon he saw it as a way of taking the dare, doing something larky and making a bit of money in the bargain."
I looked down at my bare feet for a while, listening to the night noises in the woods and wishing I were a baby kangaroo.
"Is this what it's gonna be like?"
"What?"
"Fucking."
"Sometimes."
There was another thing, an important thing, that had to be worked out between Del and me. Later, when we were in the kitchen having spiced milk and listening to Ewan MacColl sing about some Scottish guy who danced around a gallows tree, I brought it up. "OK. So we were a bet. But you knew I liked him. How come you fucked him anyway?"
Del put her hand over mine. "Yes. I knew you liked him. I did not know you'd...been with him. To be truly honest, Rosie, I do not know...what I would have done if I had known."
I pulled my hand away. Not violently or anything. But definitely away. I didn't shout. In fact, I remember my voice as being very quiet, but there was a shouting feeling inside me.
"How can you not know? I mean, I'm your daughter."
I think the stuff Del said next is the major reason I split. Not Marcus. As amazingly beautiful looking as he was, with his big perfect hands and his multi-coloured hair, after I knew about the betting thing, I thought of him as a gross, gutless jerk. But what Del said next, being as honest as she always had been with me, that was the big thing. The thing I have to work out.
She looked at me for what felt like a year and a half, not saying anything. Her eyes seemed full of love. And something else. A kind of sadness or pain. Then she started to pencil doodle on the back of a magazine on the table. I asked her to stop. She stopped, and looked back up at me.
"Rosie," she said. "I love you. Very much. More than anyone. Have since the day you were born. No. That's not true. When you came, and you were a girl, I was fuckin' terrified! I had wanted a boy. Boys liked me. Girls didn't. I was afraid of having to raise a person, have a person living with me who wouldn't like me. I could get away from the other bitches, with their jealousies, their resentments. But now there was going to be one under my roof. A bitch-in-training. An enemy."
"But, I was just a kid, a little baby."
"Of course you were. And you were nothing like that. Not then, not now." She laughed, a little tiny snort-y laugh. "Except for the pooping and the pissing, which I never came to love the way they all swore mums did, you were a treat from the start. Full of love. Funny. And so bright. You wanted to read, wanted to draw, wanted to know! I was that sort of kid, and was damn near kilt for it. I thought, 'I will not do to her what was done to me. I will endorse her, keep her close and safe, give her room. I will celebrate this kid!' And I've tried to do that, have...loved doing it. Oh, yeh, sometimes we'd have problems, but you were rarely the problem. The problem was the problem and we were the team who solved it."
Water was running out of Del's eyes. She wiped her face with the heels of her hands.
"Then you got your Rolling Red River at nine-and-a-fucking-half years of age! Christ! I had been eleven and my family treated me like a damn circus freak! I thought, I'm not going to do that with her. But I saw the way guys would look at you and I was frightened. Frightened as I had been when you were first born. Not for the same reason. Something very different." She slammed her hand on the table. "Damn! I bloody hate this!...Rosie, can you name the three most important things in my life?"
"Your work?"
"That's two. YOU are number one. Then my work. Do you know what the third most important thing in my life is?"
"The Morgan?"
"No! Not the fucking Morgan! Pulling! Pulling guys is the third most important thing in my life. Pretty fucking silly for a grown woman, I grant you, but there it is. Since I was 11, 12 years old, I've known I could walk into a room and most of the fellas there would want to take me to bed. I haven't gone with most of them, but just knowing I could gave me a sense of power. And that sense of power gave me the guts to leave home, to do my work. To raise a kid on my own.
"Then, one day, that kid starts having her own pull power. The same sort I have. What would happen, I wondered, when we started pulling the same guys? Would I clear off for her? Would she for me? Well, now it's fuckin' happened, and it's a right fuckin' mess, innit?" She leapt up and headed for the stairs.
"Don't go!"
"I'm not going. I'm just...catching me breath." She shook her head, like it was full of too much stuff, then came back to the table and pressed her palm alongside my face.
"Rosie, my being your mum, you being my kid has always come first. It still does. I'm just not sure how mum and daughter works when there's a fella. When a fella gets in the mix, it gets tangled. Look, Rosie, this is all as new to me as it is to you. I've no idea how it's all going to shake out, how we're going to handle it. It may not be of much help to know it scares me as much as it does you, but that's the truth and there you bloody well are!"
Now we were both crying! I stood up and we held each other and made dumb snurfly noises. It was like we were balanced together on the flat head of a very long thumbtack and if either of us moved, one or both of us would fall a long way down.
Del was asleep on her back, naked with a sheet pulled up between her legs. I guess she felt me looking at her. She opened her eyes, one at a time. Smiled. "More biting?"
"Uh-uh."
She held out her arms. "Come."
I curled up on my side next to her. She held me from behind, like when I was little and she was alone and couldn't sleep. She smelled like my whole life, the smell I knew best in the world. I closed my eyes and breathed in that smell. Paint and Player's cigarettes. Honeydew melon oil and baby powder. Del.
I had #&36;200 in modelling money. I also had these amazing Victorian see-through chiffon and velvet dresses, plus some other retro clothes Del had given me. Stuff she wore in the 60s. I thought I could get pretty good money for them from Arabella at Le Temps Perdu in Eugene.
People in Eugene had figured Del and Arabella would be natural pals. They were both English, both in their thirties, both from London. There was this Big Hate between them, though. They had known each other slightly from when I was three and we lived in Dickie Siggins's house in Hampstead. Del was doing incredible fairy-tale fantasy album covers for some of the top pop bands then, and the house was always full of these amazing-looking people. Feathers and velvet, sandalwood and kurtas, scarves and music. Del said Arabella was "a groupie and a thief," and that she got her overbite from "oral encounters with the Coarse Animal Members of every rock drummer in the U.K."
Del knew how I loved retro clothes, so she didn't mind my sometimes hanging out at Le Temps Perdu. At first, Arabella would ask me questions about Del, and about whether Dickie Siggins was gay. I didn't know about Dickie and would never tell her anything about Del. Because Del didn't trust her, I didn't either. It was a family loyalty thing. Arabella was nice to me, though, and I did like the way she looked. Really tiny with huge brown eyes and short shaggy blonde hair. She wore dance tights and tunics and could juggle three beanbags. She looked like a small boy who'd run away with a travelling circus. Del said that had always been "Rubella's look," and that when she was 60 she would be a "tiny, titless, wizened, bucktoothed old androgyne." Del didn't say mean things about other women unless they'd done something to her, but she wouldn't tell me what Arabella had done, saying it was "sewage under the bridge" and not worth discussing.
Arabella was in the window, fitting a wine-red puffy-sleeved velvet dress onto a mannequin. "Hullo, Roe, be with you in a tick." I looked through the racks. There was a majorly beautiful satiny-silky belted jacket in the Deco peach colour that I loved. "No, Roanne," I thought, "you're here to sell, not to buy."
Arabella really liked what I brought. Particularly the beige, turquoise and orange geometric-print 1940s suit and the long black velvet and chiffon dress with jet beads. She said, "I remember this dress on yer mum. She wore it to Ronny Scott's club one night. She was with Billy Dane. You remember Billy?"
"Not really. A little bit."
"Overdosed, poor bugger. Best damned white blues singer in England, 'e was."
I said I'd heard his albums, the ones Del did the covers for.
"Oh, right. She did do some of 'is covers, di'n't she?"
"She did all of them except the first two."
I actually remembered Billy Dane very well. He used to play with me. Taught me all these rude pub songs his father had taught him. My favourite went:
Please go easy, for I've never been done before,Please go easy, an' you can 'ave me on the floor,
Oh, I don't care what the neighbours say,
You can put me in a fam'ly way,
But PLEEEZE go easy, for I've never been done before.
I had no idea, being three, what the words meant. It had a happy little melody, though, and Billy would sing it in this girlish squeaky voice and make all these big gestures. I would try to do exactly what he did and we'd both fall about, larfin'.
When I was six, each kid in my class was asked to sing a song we'd learned at home. I sang that. The teacher sent a note to Del, which is when I found out what it meant.
Billy and Del were really close. "Vertical," Del said. Pals. Not lovers. When he died in that hotel room in Paris, she cried for two days. I wasn't going to tell any of that to Arabella, though, because Del wouldn't want me to. I knew Arabella didn't like talking about Del's accomplishments -- when I'd done it other times, her face would sort of prune up. So I mentioned the album covers. It worked. She changed the subject.
"She give you this clobber, then? How come?"
"She didn't think she'd wear them anymore. And she knew I loved them."
"If you love 'em so much, how come yer sellin' 'em?"
"Well, I want the money for something special. A surprise for Del. So I'd prefer you didn't say anything to her, OK?"
"Mum's the word, Roe...no pun intended."
I wasn't sure the word would be mum. I had tried to sound casual. I knew if Arabella thought it would hurt Del's feelings she'd tell her. But I had clothes to sell and Arabella had the only retro shop in Eugene.
She bought the lot for $500. Dresses, suits, scarves and beaded bags. Plus two Peking glass rope necklaces, one green, one lavender. Knowing her high prices to the two-parent rich kids at the college, I'd asked for $800, but five was her top offer. Plus the Deco peach jacket. I now had $700 U.S. And a great jacket. And a sort of a plan.
What with the sculptures and the paintings and the Morgan and all, Del is used to major heavy hauling. She actually likes it. Says it's good for the "lats and pecs," and that "lats and pecs" are the muscles that hold your tits up. Well, I may wind up with tits for leg warmers, but I hate carrying stuff. So I packed light. A second pair of jeans, my silky red-and-black wide-leg pants, three black tanktops, two pairs of panties -- one pink, one white -- and a genuinely old Victorian ruffle-bottom white petticoat. I'd travel in jeans, peach-and-lavender deck shoes, black tank and denim jacket. I also packed sandals and green suede elf boots for possible buggy-snakey places. Everything fit into my banana-shaped canvas army bag, with some room left over. Toothbrush and paste, ladyplugs, underpants, etc., went into my bookbag, on top of the wordbooks and drawing books, along with a handful of different-colored felt-tip pens. I pulled my new peach jacket real taut over all this, hoping it might stay less wrinkled. If not, there'd probably be an iron. Most people have irons. Even Del has an iron, and we have less "traditional domestic" stuff than just about anybody.
I left a letter on the kitchen table:
Dear Del,
I need a few weeks to try and figure out what happened with M. -- what that means to us. I still love you. Very much. I know, I really do, that you love me. I just can't seem to stop feeling like one of those air-sucking dogs people leave in cars with the windows open just a tiny bit. I need to put my whole face, my whole self in the air for a while to try and figure out who I am when I'm not standing next to me amazing mum! I will phone in a few days to let you know I'm OK. I promise. Please please PLEASE don't worry or call the police -- I know calling in the Bills isn't your usual way, but I also know that going off alone isn't mine, and I'm sort of not sure what ANYONE is gonna do these days. I just need to try and shake out all the new/weird stuff in my head.On Friday I sold some of the '60s gear you gave me. At Le Temps Perdu. Please don't be mad. I know you'd want me to be OK for money if I'm on my own. Please don't look for me. I WILL be back in time for our trip home to Vancouver. I know how important the School Thing is to you.
Love always, always, always!
Rosie
P.S. Yesterday (Thursday), I spoke to Jonas. He's that black body-builder guy with the barkless African dog who licks toes. The dog licks toes, I mean. He, Jonas, said he'd be happy to model for you in my place. He'll come by the college today, before the 4 o'clock class, and you can see if it works out. He seems like a v. nice person. XOXO. R.
I had this big postcard. D.D.A. sent it after I mailed him some of my cartoons, care of his publisher in New York. The cartoons that won the prize in Salmon Arm. Based on Canadian place names. Salmon Arm, Moose Factory, Medicine Hat, etc. He wrote, "Very good. Original. Full with humor. If one day you are near to here come visit. Follow the stones with 'D.'"
The other side of the card was a cartoon of a forest. It said "The Forest" on one of the tree branches. At the bottom was written "Gasquet, Cal." There was a scribble of a fast-food stand called "Redwood Burgers" to the right of what looked like a large garbage can shaped like a brown bear with its mouth wide open. A word-balloon coming out of this open mouth said "Commence Here." The bear made me think of Mucus's story. I decided this was a good omen. If woods/bear/man was part of the poison, maybe woods/bear/man would be part of the cure. In the upper-right-hand corner, in the forest, he'd drawn a largish house, its windows coloured in with yellow. There was a porch with what looked like hanging Japanese lanterns. They also had yellow bits. Above the house door was a sign. It said inn nainity.
There was a 5 P.M. bus that went to a place with a great-sounding name, Eureka, California. The bus passed through Gasquet. The ticket woman said it stopped at Redwood Burgers for people to stretch, get food and "relieve themselves."
It was an eyefood ride. First, we went along the coast road. Tall craggy rocks with amazing shapes grew out of the sea like wizards in mytho stories. For beauty, and amazingness, the trick was to keep looking to the right, where the sea was, not to the left, where the Dairy Queens were. Sometimes I would feel scared. When this happened, I'd say "Eureka," very softly so nobody'd notice, and the scaredness would mostly calm down.
After a while, the bus turned inland. Then we were in a forest with huge trees. I mean REALLY huge! Some of them were so high you couldn't see the tops. The driver announced that these were redwood trees and that some of them were thousands of years old.
"Redwood Burgers! Pit stop!"
We all got off the bus. It was a funky little place. Picnic tables made out of redwood. A hotdog/hamburger stand. To the right was a tiny store whose sign said Redwood Bob, Travel Necessaries. To the left of the food stand was another tiny building, also redwood, with two doors marked ladies and gents. To the left of the Gents was a garbage can shaped like an open-mouthed brown bear.
My face looked really young in the tin washroom mirror. I put on more lipstick and mascara, which usually adds a few years. Then I queued up with the other bus people and ordered a cheeseburger, pink lemonade and a bag of corn chips. So far, I was doing OK, but I'd done these sorts of things before. Going into the forest and finding D.D.A.'s house would be the new part. The maybe-hard part. I took the postcard out of my jacket pocket. "Follow the stones with 'D.'"
I watched the others get back on the bus, making myself stay where I was. I didn't know any of the bus people, but it still felt like they were leaving me. After they'd gone I noticed how dark it was. And that was by the side of the road. Inside the forest it would be what Del calls Welldigger's Arse. I thought I'd better find out if Redwood Bob considered flashlights a Travel Necessary.
Mr. Bob, or whoever it was behind the counter, looked like God in the Italian Ceiling Thing where the guy is falling out of heaven. And he did have flashlights. Bought one, and some batteries, thinking I'd better start watching my expenses. I hadn't even been on the road one whole day and, including bus fare, I was already down almost $40.
Mr. Bob asked me where I was "headed for." Yanks do that. Ask strangers snoopy questions. Sometimes it makes me feel poked at, but this time I thought it might help to tell.
"To Inn Nainity. Do you know where it is?"
"Inn Nainity? No, can't say as I do."
I showed him the postcard.
"Oh, yeah, that place. These direction's'll get you there. Just follow the Ds on the rock along the path like it says. It'll take a while....Why don'tcha getcha self coupla sandwiches and some pop?"
I passed on the sandwiches because they were all on white bread, which I hate. Bought a bag of M&M's, the American version of Smarties, and a plastic bottle of water. Another $5 spent. Money. Like Del says, "Piss through a goose."
Mr. Bob loaded up my flashlight. He was looking at me funny. Not pervo funny. Sort of like I was some sort of wrong. I put everything in my bookbag and thanked him for his help.
"You're welcome, youngster," he said.
Next to the garbage bear was a path leading into the forest. Just the way it was on D.D.A.'s postcard. I headed into the forest figuring everything was pretty cool. A little spooky but basically OK.
After a few minutes of walking along, watching the ground, I saw three marked rocks. Three in a row, on the left-hand side of the path. D.D.D. "Fine," I said out loud, "everything's going fine."
For a while there was moonlight coming through the humungus trees. Then, as I went deeper in, it got to being a major welldigger-type situation. Seriously dark. I shone my flashlight up into the trees. Something flew. A bird? A bat? There were noises. Crunches and hoots and stuff. I wondered whether using a bear as a garbage can related in any way to the presence of real bears. I thought about going back to Redwood Burgers and starting again in the morning. Then I saw three more D rocks and decided they were an omen, meaning don't be a major sucky baby. I kept going. I did start singing, though, which is something I do when I'm alone and scared.
My old man said, "Follow the van,And don't dilly-dally on the way..."
Off with the van wit' me old man in it...
I followed on wit' me old cock linnet...
I dillied, I dallied, I dallied and I dillied...
The next line was about losing my way so I decided to sing something else.
Gentlemen will please refrainFrom passing water whilst the train
Is standing in the station, I love yooouu...
We encourage constipation,
Whilst the train is in the station,
Surely, you've got --
There was a fucking great SCREECH! I crouched down, screaming, wishing like crazy that I was in my room in Vancouver or Yachats or Salmon Arm or even boring gross fucking Burnaby where somebody once put dogshit in my locker. I wished I was any place but this great huge welldigger's arse of a great huge dark fucking forest where something superlarge was about to rape and kill and eat me all to death! I was in too deep to turn back. I had no idea what time it was. Was Del home? Did she get my note? Would she ever find out if I was eaten by a bear? Or a cougar? A cougar? I didn't even know what the fuck a cougar was or even if they had them here, but it sounded like one of the many sorts of things that might be what was about to eat me. I sat down on the ground, uselessly hiding myself behind a tree. Del says sitting on damp ground gives you piles. So what, eh? Who cares? Only the bear/cougar/lion would see them. "Eat my piles, cougar!!!" I drank some water and ate the whole damn bag of M&M's, one M at a time.
When I'm scared, I sing. When I'm totally terrified, I pick something out of my wordbook and say it over and over. There was this really neat phrase I found once. On a bottle of Polish vodka the colour of piss. Brian drank this vodka sometimes. It has a blade of grass in it. I stood up. Took some big yoga breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Then I shouted, "ZHOOBROVKAAA! FLAVOURED WITH THE HERB BELOVED OF THE EUROPEAN BISON!!!" I said this over and over, walking faster and faster until I came to a fork in the path. There were three more D rocks on the right side of the fork, so I forked right.
After a bit, I thought I could see lights through the trees. I wanted to leave the path and just run through the trees to where the lights were, but there was another batch of D rocks and the postcard had said specifically to follow D rocks. So I did. I wanted to at least run down the path, but the army bag and the bookbag were feeling lots heavier than when I started into the Forest Without End. Five years ago, seemed like. I drank more water. Shouted, "HELLLOOO! DEE...DEE...AAAYYY!" No answer except for a weirdassed low fucking rumble. Decided to run. Followed the rock path. Fell down. Skinned holy hell out of my palms on little phantom roadrocks or whatever. Got a killer knot on the right side of my rib cage. Went back to fast walking. "Zhoobrovka...flavored with the herb...beloved of the Euro...pean bisonzhoobrovkaflavouredwiththeherbbelovedoftheEuropeanbisonzhoo -- "
It exploded into my eyes like a Magritte floating castle! A huge redwood house. Paper lanterns strung along an enormous porch. I was standing in front of a big boulder. Red-painted words: et voilà! BIENVENUE! Bienvenue. I knew that word from Del's show in Montréal. Welcome.
The porch went from one end of the house to the other. It was really pretty, with wooden rockers and white wicker chairs like the ones in Le Temps Perdu. An outdoor rocking chesterfield with flower-print pillows. A white wicker table with magazines on it. In different languages. Above my head, all along the length of the porch, were the paper lanterns from the postcard. They had electric bulbs inside, and up close I could see the designs on them. Flowers or Asian writing.
"Bon soir."
I dropped my gear and screamed.
I think what it was was that, after walking for what seemed like ever in a great huge dark forest all by myself for the first time in my whole entire life, I needed to see somebody real. I don't mean real. I mean regular-size. And Didi was. Is. A dwarf. And a dwarf in the middle of a forest is somehow even less regular-size than a dwarf crossing the street in Vancouver. Not that I'd ever actually seen a street-crossing Vancouver dwarf. I may be forgetting somebody, but I think Didi was my first dwarf. So I screamed.
He was very nice about it. "Pardohn," he said in that whispery voice he has. "I did not want to give you fear...I am Didi."
"D.D.A.?"
"Yes, the same."
"I'm...I'm Roanne Chappell."
"Ah, yes. As I t'ought. Medsenat. Moose Factoree."
He remembered my cartoons! "Yes! Right! That's me!"
"Welcome to Innanneetee. Would you like a laymo nayd or a coca?"
"Lemonade?"
"Oui."
"Yes. Yes, I would, thank you. I'd love a lemonade."
"Bon. Sit. I will return." He went into the house. I flopped down on the chesterfield, wasted. And happy. I was in D.D.A.'s actual house! He knew right away who I was! And he was real. Really little, but absolutely real. And I'd made it through a megaforest without fucking up. Amazing!
That forest was now all around me. Dark, dark, dark. And from where I sat it felt like there was nothing on the earth but this one house and four thousand trees in the darkness.
Didi scootched around the screen door and onto the porch, carrying a tray. On it were two large glasses of lemonade with lots of ice and a glass bowl of strawberries. I took a glass and he put the tray on the wicker table.
"You 'ave t'irst?" he asked, smiling at me gulping down the lemonade.
"Yes. I have lots of thirst, I'm sorry."
"For what? 'Ave the other glass."
"That's yours."
"No. It is for you. The two are for you. I believed you would 'ave t'irst after your long time in the forest. I bring two glasses at the same time because I do not like going two times to the kitchen."
He had a really sweet smile. Little teeth, sort of scalloped like the hang-down part of a white awning. His eyes were bright brown buttons sewn onto a sock doll. He wore tiny blue jeans and a pale yellow shirt. His hair was longish, light brown and gray. It looked soft like baby hair. He had a bristly little beard and moustache, also brown and gray but more gray than his headhair. The hands that made the brilliant cartoons were small and slightly pudgy. The lemonade tasted great and Didi seemed to like me, seemed glad I was there. I felt my shoulders roll down. Yes, I thought, I think I'm safe. I think this is good.
Now that I wasn't worried about being raped by a cougar, I noticed that the forest had a wonderful smell. Tree bark and green things. Didi asked how old I was.
"Sixteen."
"No, I do not believe so...Bob, from the little store, watches to be sure everyone 'oo come to vizeet 'ave card from me. 'E telephone to say you are arriving. 'E give a description. I 'ad the sense of Roanne Chappell, so I look for your correspondence. The letter of last year of Roanne Chappell say she 'as thirteen years."
I unrelaxed and was scared again. There was no way I wanted to be sent back into the forest in the dark.
"OK, OK, I'm fourteen. But I'm a very grown-up person. Everybody says so!"
"Yes, yes, Petite, I can see you are. 'Ave you run away from 'ome?"
"No...not really. My mother is a painter and sculptor. Her work is really good. She's a terrific person. I'm just taking a sort of holiday before I go back to school...I have...some new things to figure out and I was hoping I could do that here. Visiting you. And thinking. And drawing, which helps me think. I won't be a bother. I promise. I won't even talk to you unless you talk first." My eyes were filling up but I believe I was successful at keeping major cry or whinge out of my voice.
I reminded Didi that he did invite me to visit him. And I promised to call Del the next day, and he could listen if he wanted. If Del said I had to come back to Yachats at once, I would, of course, do that. He smiled. He nodded. He said, "Bon."
The inside of Inn Nainity was even better than the outside (and the outside was perfect!). Lots of phlumphy chairs to sink into. Funny little objects everywhere, too many to take in all at once, though I immediately connected to a huge green malachite egg, out of which an oversize chicken leg in a red high-heeled shoe was struggling to hatch. And a lit-up neon daisy in a Coca-Cola bottle.
And the Amazing Clock Thing. We'd only been inside a few minutes when it turned midnight. The glass door of a tall wooden cabinet swung open. Out of it came a carved and painted wooden boy the same size as Didi. The carved boy had a brass mallet in his hand. He hit a brass gong in the cabinet, which went bonnggg. Then the wooden boy went back inside the cabinet and the door closed.
"Wow! Does it do that all day?"
"Ah, no. Only at the twelves."
There were framed D.D.A. cartoons on the walls. I recognized a lot of them. And "serious" oil paintings too. I thought one was really great. Two beautiful naked women with bald heads. They were in dark, jungly-looking water, with lily pads around them.
"You like it?"
"Oh, yes, very much."
"Léonor Fini. She was married wit' Ernst."
"Ernst?"
"You do not know Max Ernst? You would, I believe, like 'im. I believe Ernst would like also 'Moose Factoree.' I will give you a book. Come, I will do it now. And show you your room where you sleep."
I grabbed my gear and followed him up the stairs. He had a little sand-dune-shaped mound sticking out of his back and he walked like a big wind-up toy. Like Charlie Chaplin without the cane.
Three walls of Didi's studio were floor-to-ceiling with books. More books were stacked on the floor. The fourth wall had a brown corduroy-covered daybed in front of it, and was filled with framed cartoons by other people. Many of them were autographed and said nice things about Didi's work. I recognized Searle, Feiffer, Brilliant and Crumb. There were also framed lithos by dead people like Boilly and Daumier. And in the middle of all these great cartoonists was MOOSE FACTORY! My cartoon! Two "completed" moose trying to keep their balance on a conveyor belt while factory workers applied antlers to a third moose.
"You...you put me on your wall."
"Oui. I like very much 'Moose Factoree.'"
"I'm glad...I really am."
He reached up and patted my arm. Then he climbed a ladder and hauled down a large book.
"Ernst! You can look at it in your bed. Would you like first a bat'?"
"A bat?"
"Oui. A big bat' wiz bool. To wash yourself."
"Oh, a bath!" Stavro told me once that when people were scared, which I had been in the forest, it made them smell bad. I said yes, I'd really like a bath.
He flashed his tiny awning-scallop teeth into a quick smile. "Bon. Follow me." The Ernst book tucked under his arm, he headed down the hall. I followed, hauling my gear. Bool?
Different people have different things that are important to them. For Del and me, one of those important things has always been large old bathtubs with feet. Didi had one. It looked too big for him to bathe in without sliding around a lot. Maybe there was a little tub somewhere in the house.
It was a great-looking loo. In addition to the tub with feet, there was a sink shaped like a large white tulip. Next to the sink stood a wooden washstand with a black marble top. Large pale green towels hung from black marble racks on each side. In the middle of the marble top was a big white bowl with a pitcher in it. The toilet had an unpainted wooden seat. The tiny window next to the toilet had see-through curtains the same pale green as the towels. I could see that D.D.A. -- Didi -- took time to decorate his house, which most guys I'd met, except maybe Dickie Siggins, didn't.
"This is a wonderful house. I love tubs with feet. And those pitcher-and-bowl things. We lived in a house with a pitcher and bowl like that when I was three. In London. London, England."
"'Lavabo.' The pitcher and bowl are called lavabo. The stand is called also lavabo."
"Lavabo. Nice word. It's nice in the mouth."
"Lavabo?...Yes. Yes, it is, Petite. Follow again."
The parade of superterrific rooms continued. "My" room was perfect! Tiny and cozy, two windows with one of those iron grille-work beds between them. Painted white. Covered in a green-and-white patchwork quilt with a diamond design. There was a wooden dresser with an oval mirror attached to it by wood things that curved out like snakes' heads. There was a little bookcase with eight or nine books, some upright, some lying on their sides. On each side of the bed was a small square wooden table with a bell-shaped glass lamp on it. The glass was Deco peach. I dropped my gear. Home!
"Bon. Now I go to sleep. I will see you in the late morning. You will find me in the kitchen or on the porch or up the stairs in my studio. Good night, Petite. Bo rev...the bool are in the lavabo." A quick smile and he turned, Chaplin-ing out of the room.
"Bool"? What were bool? Bulls, maybe. Rubber bulls. There were lots of weirdassed objects in the house, so rubber bulls instead of rubber duckies made sort of sense. I grabbed my toothbrush/toothpaste and went to look in the lavabo.
"Captain Jim's Morocco Mint Bubblebath." Bubbles! Bool were bubbles. Perfect! I filled the humungotub, tore off my woods-grubby clothes, put my hair up and wove the toothbrush handle in to hold it. The water was steaming and the bubblebath made the room smell like chewing gum and wet leaves. I was pretty sure that D.D.A. wasn't any kind of pervo but I latched the door because people can be sudden grenading disappointments. "Petite." That was French for little. Funny, him calling me that, what with his being barely as tall as just below my tits. I climbed into the hot minty-bubbled water and closed my eyes. When I woke up the bubbles were gone, the water was cool, and the tips of my fingers were pruney.
I was too sleepy to focus on Ernst. Fell asleep as soon as I crawled under the covers, the Ernst book next to me. I woke up in the still-dark, having a full-out anxiety attack. Like when I was nine and Del would leave me alone at night because I insisted I was old enough to stay without a baby-minder. I wasn't then, and it was hideously, embarrassingly possible that I wasn't now either. I turned on one of the bell-shaped lamps. Started to look at the Ernst pictures, which I recognized as being surrealist, like Magritte. Surrealism was one of my favourites, but, in the middle of the night, in a strange house, it was not the best choice for calming down.
In my brilliantly economical packing, I'd forgotten a nightdress, or even a big shirt, so I wrapped the top-sheet around me, found my flashlight and headed downstairs, thinking I'd sit on the porch and wait for morning.
I don't know why I started to cry, but it felt good, so I let it roll, trying not to make too much noise. A light went on up on the top floor. A tiny head stuck itself out of a window.
"Allo, Petite. What is wrong?"
"Nothing, Mr. D.D.A., I'm fine....Just a little keyed up, I guess."
"Non. I believe not fine. Come up, please."
I expected a little tiny bed with little tiny pillows, but everything was regulation size. Except Didi, who sat like a ventriloquist's dummy in the middle of the wooden bed, under an every-colour-in-the-world patchwork quilt. He patted the bed for me to sit. Oh, pleasepleasePLEASE, I thought, please don't pervo on me in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods in the middle of fucking nowhere. I sat on the absolute edge of the bed, with my eyes on the door.
Didi sort of chuckled, a tiny noise in a smiling mouth. "Rest trankeel, Petite. Shwee payDAY."
"What?"
"I am not dangerous. I am payDAY. TaPETTE. Ohmosexwal."
"You're gay?"
"Too joor."
"Too what?"
"Yes. I am, as you say, 'gay.' I will not 'arm you. I promeez. I swear."
Because of Del, I had spent my whole life around lots of grown-up male persons. The others were all full-sized, but I seemed to know which ones were good. Some, like Marcus, could be tacky assholes, but even Brian was good, wonderful actually, when he was sober. Didi was sober, and everything about him said, "I may be unusual, but I am good. And kind. And not a pervo."
"I believe you. You're a very nice man and I'm sorry I woke you up."
The neat little awning-scallop smile. "It is all right. You are first night in a new plass. This bed is very grand and I am very small. Why do you not turn off the light and sleep 'ere? Wiz company. Or you can leave on the light."
Oh boy, I thought. If I was wrong about him, this could be the dumbest thing I'd ever done. But it didn't feel wrong. Not even a little bit. There was a bright red iron woodstove in the middle of the room, its stovepipe going up through the ceiling. It made the room smell like cedar. And strawberries. This really nice strawberry smell. Didi looked small and sweet in the middle of his bed. I wanted and needed very much to land, to stop circling around in the night like a grenade-evading flying starfish.
"Thank you," I said. Wrapped in my bedsheet, I climbed in under the multi-coloured quilt.
"Bon," he said. "Close or open the light?"
"Uh, close."
He turned off the lamp and lay down on his side, facing away from me. The quilt was thick, filled with feathers. And the nice roomsmell was him! Didi smelled like strawberries! I felt shy and the shyness was making me lie there rigid, staring at the shadows and shapes on the ceiling.
"You are trankeel? Fine?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Non. I can feel your ahnkyetay...you must sleep, Petite. 'Old on to my carapass."
My ahnkyetay? His carapass? What was a "carapass"? If it was French for dick I was definitely going to hold my breath till I died.
"Carapass?"
"My eump...the eump on my back. Put your 'ead eunder my eump, close your eyes...'old on to the eump an' try to sleep. Yes? OK?"
"Yes, OK." What the hell, eh? I closed my eyes, nuzzled my head in under his sand dune and wrapped my arms around it. It was hard and smooth, like a Brancusi sculpture, only warmer. I loved the strawberry smell. It smelled like a lullaby sounded and I fell asleep.
Didi is one of those lucky buggers who can sleep in. Not me. I always wake up as soon as any sort of daylight comes into a room. I think it's from so much travelling. I never know where I am first thing. I need to name the place and decide if it's good or bad, so I can figure out how to handle it. Sometimes that takes a while, so I wake up early to give myself a head start.
Waking up under Didi's hump was definitely a new place. I had a scared moment of not knowing where the hell or what the hell. Then the strawberry smell kicked in and I smiled. The stove fire had died and the room outside the quilt was cold. Didi was superwarm, so I stayed holding on to him for a while. Then I decided that my life had been changing in major ways and that I needed to write it all down so I could maybe understand everything better. I slipped out from under the feather quilt, rewrapped my top-sheet nightdress and went downstairs to my room to get my journal and wordbooks. It was even colder there than in Didi's room, so I hauled the stuff back upstairs.
When I clunked under the quilt with all the books, Didi opened his eyes, sort of.
"Bonjoor."
"Oh, I'm sorry. It's really cold in my...the downstairs bedroom. Could I, would you mind if I stayed here under the covers and wrote in my journal? I'll be real quiet."
"PahdprobLEM. Byahnsoor."
"Is that yes?"
He smiled. "Oui, sheree, that is yes. But I sleep more." He closed his eyes, still smiling, so I figured everything was cool.
That was when I started writing all this. About Del. About Marcus. About big-handed guys and the Bend Over Thing. All of it. So I can start to figure out what's happening. So I have something to give my maybe-sister. And so that, if anything happens to me that's mega-grenade, there'll be some sort of record that I had been in the world.
Didi is walking up, so I have to stop writing now. He just asked, in this sleepy whisper, if I wanted a bool de café olay. I know "bool" from last night and "olay" from when Del was dating Julio. Mexican bubblebath. Amazing!
Copyright © 200 by Gale Zoë Garnett